Apple Inc. took over the Internet again this week, with its announcement of new iOS and other software igniting a barrage of news coverage (including PM's). However, the Internet dominance of the most powerful technology company in the world drowns out the story of a perfectly good fruit.

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On page three of a Google search for the term "apple," there it is: the first mention of apple, the fruit. It's a Wikipedia entry reminding visitors that "the apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree."

The Wiki listing for the delicious fruit is sandwiched between apple-history.com, a site that offers "a brief history of the company that changed the computing world forever," and Google Finance's own description of the technology company that is arguably its greatest competitor. Next down the listings is a section of the blog mashable.com dedicated to news about Apple Inc., and below that, another one from Computerworld. You have to keep digging—a full six pages into your search—before you come to Google's listing of the U.S. Apple Association, the advocacy group representing American apple growers, distributors, packers, shippers, retailers and equipment manufacturers. (No "developers," though. They don't use that term.)

The stated goals of the U.S. Apple Association are to "represent the entire industry on national issues," "increase the demand for apples and apple products" and "provide information on matters pertaining to the apple industry." But by sharing a product name with that of Steve Jobs's giant tech company, apple growers find themselves in a peculiar—and perhaps unique—kind of search perdition.

A regular visitor to the site would know of the threat caused to mid-Atlantic apple growers by the brown marmorated stink bug ($37 million in lost crops last year), might have stumbled across the recipe of the month (a refreshing apple sangria) and would learn of the many health benefits of apples (full of fiber, plus lots of antioxidants in the skin of the fruit). And the site has plenty of information for consumers on apple varieties, including Honeycrisp, Braeburn, Red Delicious and, yes, McIntosh (that's how they spell it, thank you very much). The site is informative and well-designed, includes an up-to-date blog ("Blogging for Apples") and represents an industry that produces just about as healthy and unassailable a product as one can imagine.

Yet as more announcements came from the Cupertino, Calif.–based technology company during its Worldwide Developer's Conference this week—iCloud, Lion, iOS 5—filling the entirety of the Internet with their importance, I wondered just how difficult it must be for an ordinary citizen to even find information on the flavor, color, texture and season of the Jonagold (sweet/tart, red with yellow/orange, crisp, October to May)—or for that matter, on any apple at all.

"It helps to add an 's' to your search," Allison Parker says. She's the director of consumer health and education for the U.S. Apple Association and a registered dietitian with a master's in nutrition communications. Her job is to communicate to the public the many nutritional benefits of eating apples ("research even shows that apple juice helps Alzheimer's patients," she told me), an occupation that leaves her frequently stymied by Apple Inc. overshadowing her fruit facts.

I tried her add-an-s tactic. It helps; Apple-the-company's website is still the No. 1 result, but at least the fruit comes in second—although the U.S. Apple Association is still on the second page of the search. Parker and her association don't seem to feel overly threatened by the Internet dominance of Steve Jobs's tech juggernaut, but it does cause some issues for them. "We subscribe to media news alerts, and it's difficult," she says. "We pay for that service, and it still returns 50 to 100 Apple [computer] articles a week. We don't want [stories about] computers. But what can you do, right?"

I asked Parker if the U.S. Apple Association had made any attempts at search-engine optimization to help its results. "It's something we're looking into," she said. "We just launched our website last winter. And we also now have Facebook and YouTube pages and a Twitter account. So it's all relatively new, but we want people visiting more." (As I write this, the Facebook page has 550 "likes"—including me—and the organization's Twitter account has about 330 followers—again, including me.)

In addition to adding an "s," Parker also suggested adding modifiers to your search to ensure that you get fruit-specific, rather than technology-specific, information. I tried some of her suggestions. "Apple, nutrition" worked well; "apple, growers" also helped. But "apple, McIntosh" was a disaster. Even with Apple's spelling including an extra "a" (MacIntosh), I got a page full of Mac news. So I tried just "McIntosh," and even then the first result was the McIntosh audio company, makers of high-end stereo equipment—more technology. The poor fruit varietal just couldn't catch a break.

I told Parker that it seemed unfair that America's most popular fruit should be so overshadowed by the technology company. But she corrected me. "Bananas," she said with a sigh. "In the U.S., bananas are the most popular fruit. Apples are a close second." If only Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had created the Banana computer company back in the 1970s, things might have been different.